The Landmark 1976 Church Committee Report and the Evolution of Language used for Black Activists by Law Enforcement and FBI
Supplemental reading for “Records Show Omaha Police Surveilled BLM Organizers” By Emily Chen-Newton
A 2020 analysis by Sahil Singhvi from the Brennan Center for Justice emphasizes that “While law enforcement agencies focus their infiltration on the advocacy of left-leaning groups, Black protesters, and Muslims, they continue to pay insufficient attention to the United States’ many violent white supremacist threats.” In response to the evidence of surveillance in the Omaha Police Department’s 2020 emails, the ACLU of Nebraska sent a letter to the chief of police asking whether these tactics have “drawn resources away from investigating genuine public safety concerns.” As of this publication, they have not received a response.
In the Brennan Center analysis, Singhvi suggests that the policies surrounding police infiltration of protests might be due for an update. He points out the landmark 1976 report from the Church Committee, which investigated federal intelligence abuse like COINTELPRO and called for, “raising the threshold for intelligence collection by shifting the focus from association and advocacy to demonstrated dangerous conduct.”
Despite the recommendation of the 1976 report, heavy-handed surveillance of Black activists continues in the U.S. And evidence of a new FBI term, “Black Identity Extremist” reported by Foreign Policy in 2017, triggered legal action from the National ACLU and the organization MediaJustice. They filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the FBI for materials related to what the ACLU calls “the bureau’s fabrication of a “Black Identity Extremist” (BIE) threat category that is based on racial stereotypes rather than evidence of a true security threat.” However, BIE is only one of many such terms. Mark Carter, staff attorney for the national ACLU, emphasizes the dangerous vagueness of the language used by the FBI and law enforcement to describe groups of Black activists. Carter notes terms like, “Black Separatist Extremists”, “Black Racially Motivated Extremists” and “perceived racial injustice” leave too much room for interpretation, and are often treated as proxies for violent threats.